El Faro captain was working off of outdated Hurricane Joaquin track

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — During Wednesday's Marine Board of Investigation hearing, it was revealed that there were major delays in processing weather information on Hurricane Joaquin and turning it around to El Faro.

Two executives with Applied Weather Technologies, the company that provides the weather system on board, called Bon Voyage, said it doesn’t know why the newer track of Hurricane Joaquin didn't get to the ship more quickly.

The system gathers information from the National Hurricane Center and other government agencies and then enhances the data with information like wind speed and wave data.

The same system is used on about 5,500 other vessels, many are commercial.

“What was the reason for the late processing?” asked Thomas Roth-Roffy, lead investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.

“I don’t know. I’m not aware of a reason,” said Rich Brown, AWT’s VP of Operations.

“For some reason an anomaly that we have not reproduced or identified, that tropical storm file was not updated,” said Jerry Hale, AWT’s assistant manager of Technical Support and Operations. “Instead, what went out was the tropical text file that was from the previous tropical storm forecast, well not forecast, but output file that we had generated,” said Hale.

It was also unclear from the testimony whether El Faro had uploaded the latest updates to the BVS.

“The download link was accessible but I can’t say whether or not it was made directly available to the ship. The BVS is provided depending on the needs of each company,” said Hale.

El Faro had also not opted to receive tropical updates which come in every hour.

Trending on ActionNewsJax.com:

• Copperhead bites customer in Lowe's gardening department
• 18 arrested in 'Operation Riptide'
• Man accused of having sex with woman, taking photos of her while she was passed out
• Parent suing Duval Schools over transgender bathroom use policy
• Disney World honors 22-year-old day-pass ticket

In previous testimony, witnesses said Davidson planned to “shoot under” the storm based on the information he had.

El Faro did have capabilities to receive weather information directly from the National Hurricane Center, but that information did not come with enhancements tacked on by BVS.

The Marine Board of Investigation pressed the witnesses in order to better understand how the data is received and analyzed by BVS which inherently comes with delays.

The National Hurricane Center puts out forecasts from observations obtained three hours prior. Once AWT receives that information it then takes another six hours to process, enhance, and then send out through BVS, meaning the weather packages sent out to the ship are already nine hours old.

Keeping that in mind and the fact that El Faro received a duplicated weather package, the attorney for Davidson’s wife William Bennett continued to press AWT on the delays.

“Would you agree with me that it wasn’t until 30 September 2015 at 1500 that the captain received additional weather data that he had not received since the NHC did its observation 21 hours before?” asked Bennett.

“No that’s not correct,” said Brown.

“Why not?” asked Bennett.

“Because the underlying winds and waves are based on the latest forecast and it was included in that,” said Brown. “The underlying winds and waves will show you the track.”

“But on a visual it was a 21-hour delay in him getting updated information on the track of Joaquin, correct?” said Bennett.

“On the track line, yes,” said Brown.

AWT said it’s generally up to the captain to opt in to receive tropical updates which means he’d have to check a box in the system to enable it. There are additional costs associated with more data but Hale said in the case of El Faro there were no limitations nor additional requests for more data.

Cox Media Group